


when the world goes dark ;

by gryffindored



Category: Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Heavy Angst, Pain, angst honestly, enjoy :"), just a whole heck of a lot of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 11:03:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16283396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gryffindored/pseuds/gryffindored
Summary: So I got this anon months ago, and it inspired a lot of angst in me. the ask went as follows: “what if Rowan was still blood sworn to Maeve, and Maeve ordered him to hurt (whip) Aelin? Would their mate bond overpower Maeve’s blood oath? Or would the blood oath win? What do you think?” Now, naturally, we can all presume that the mating bond would overpower in the sense that Rowan’s preservation of his mate would make his gd head explode if he had to bring harm to her. I don’t think this is how it would’ve gone. So, I skewed some technicalities and this is purely AU for some unadulterated, upsetting ANGST. You’re welcome. (TBH, I think this is some of my best writing.) So, I figured I’d publish this before KOA, because -- well, yeah. I think we’ll get plenty of canon angst in KOA. ENJOY, LOVELIES.





	when the world goes dark ;

“Begin.”

The word harbored such an unnatural sharpness, clanging throughout every cavern of his body. Maeve’s voice boomed past the thundering in his ears, amplified by the very bond that had him standing in that exact spot. It sent needles through his veins, eliciting a profound pain that continued to surpass itself with each second more. The single syllable was served not as a suggestion, but a command, and his blood itched with it.

Rowan Whitethorn thought he knew torment, but all other suffering quickly paled in comparison.

He felt feral to the furthest degree, his heart racing in a panic while his chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt short of breath, couldn’t recall the dizziness that accompanied such a thing. Senses that were usually hyper-focused, alert with predatory instinct, were now dulled as if his immortality was nonexistent. He felt as if he had been submerged underwater, everything in him fogged and diluted. Magic still existed and he was powerful as ever, but this feeling was akin to —

He swallowed against the memory, his throat dry like ash and it made him strangle a cough. Was it raw emotion or the warring of his body’s will that caused such disruption in the most basic instincts?

The last time he’d felt this lost in his senses he had just reunited with Aelin. Aelin, who was then only his queen, his  _carranam,_ his friend. It was a pleasant loophole to being sent, through Maeve’s blood oath, to track down Lorcan. Finding her. Holding her. Loving her.  _Gods_.

Aelin.

His queen. His  _carranam_. His friend. His lover. His wife. His mate.

_Mate_.

Not Lyria, the female he loved centuries long. Lyria, who died pregnant with his child. She wasn’t his mate. His head reeled every which way, Rowan had suspected as much, knew in the darkest, most intimate corners of his heart, about Aelin. What she was — what  _they_  were to one another. He had pushed away the glimmer of possibility, shoving it deep away and refusing to acknowledge it. Even as his relationship with Aelin began to take physical and romantic turns, the prince did his damned best to convince himself it couldn’t be real. Two mates in one lifetime was more a myth than a reality, but that wasn’t even the case, was it? His entire past felt like a lie.

Certainly, his hesitation wasn’t simply because he harbored such certainty over Lyria’s place in his universe. No, it wasn’t that at all. It would have felt easy if it were. Sworn to Maeve, Rowan would never be able to stray far from the woman. Ultimately, she held a control over him that ran, it seemed, just as deep as the mating one he and Aelin had danced around. Maeve’s power and vindictiveness were a dangerous combination.

His mind was in overdrive, a splitting headache driving down his skull and through his spine. He gasped for air against it, shuddering with the sudden intake of breath.

Like an echo, Maeve’s voice pulsed in his brain:  _begin_. She pushed against the oath with new fervor, his body feeling foreign. Like it wasn’t entirely his anymore. And it wasn’t.

It couldn’t be his.

Rowan’s fingers tightened around the object in his hand. He didn’t remember grabbing it. He wouldn’t. Of course not. It wasn’t him, not really. The blood oath, the  _fucking blood oath_. He couldn’t resist the command any longer, everything in him shattering to pieces.

_Begin_ , she commanded through their blood, and the word shot through his veins like poison, settling right down to the very fingertips that had curled around that whip and he couldn’t look at her, his Fireheart, golden and broken, when the leather cut through wind and air on its way to skin, the weapon whistling threateningly. He couldn’t look at her, couldn’t find her figure against chaos, couldn’t bring himself to take in the sight of blood rising across her back, heavy ruby pearls marking the line of the whip,  _his whip_ ,in _his hand_ , before pooling and spreading and his whole body was numb and he was going to be ill, felt the sick rise in his throat, and a woman’s voice, his mistress’s voice, chilled the air with words he didn’t hear so much as felt as his fingers tightened of their own accord —

“What number was that, Aelin?”

Rowan vomited into the marked silence.

The entire, empty contents of his stomach came up in one quick instant, acidic bile scraping like needles against his throat. His skin burned and prickled as he continued dry heaving. He bent at the waist then lower as his knees buckled and all he could do was prop himself up with a hand and elbow to keep from collapsing entirely. When he finally straightened, the action foreign and feeling rather against his will, it was on shaky legs and with trembling hands.

All pieces of himself — body, mind, and soul — warred inwardly. The mating bond fought against Maeve’s blood oath. It was a strong string branching from his heart and stretching deeper yet. The intricate make-up of his very being ached as his mate endured a pain that ran beyond the physical as it managed also to reopen wounds and scars within her mind. His soul threatened to  _break_  to know he was the one causing it all. And he’d rather that, to break down. To cease to exist.

But Rowan couldn’t.

His vision was hazy but not enough so that he missed the penetrating stare of his mate as she twisted within her limited range of motion to see him; golden-rimmed eyes of turquoise were unblinking as she willed him to look at her. And when he did, what he saw nearly broke him completely.

x

Aelin took deep, slow breaths. She was no stranger to the sensation of braided leather whipping flesh. Certainly, the pain couldn’t be forgotten — no matter how much time had passed. It was a wound that struck her deep, marring her for the rest of her days. Still, nothing could have prepared her for this. The ache went beyond the slices across her bare back and struck heavy in the very heart that thumped a wild tattoo against her ribcage.

Still, the only sound she elicited were her breaths. Deep, decided breaths that she used to try and ground herself against the dizzying pain and sorrow. Even as Maeve’s voice cut through the ringing in her ears and the throbbing in her skull, she refused to speak. Refused, even, to look at the woman with death dark hair.

Instead, Aelin leveled her gaze at Rowan the best she could as she twined her neck to catch sight of him. Her King, her husband, her  _carranam_  and lover and friend and —  _gods_.

The Fae warrior was far from it as he shook and dry heaved and fought within himself. His pains were palpable through the mating bond. Still new, the strength of it was yet to be fully uncovered. Perhaps, though, it was for the best that the bond was so new, a fawn wobbling on legs brand new to earth; for if this were what she could feel so soon after its birth, what would it have been like if the bond had been accepted and locked earlier?

One look at Rowan and Aelin knew she didn’t want to know the answer to her thought.

She’d never seen him like this. It wasn’t even a weakness so much as a complete breakdown of his systems. His beautiful, sharp face was contorted in despair as his body cringed in physical pain. She saw the sweat beading across his skin, creating a dull sheen across planes of muscle and causing his tunic to stick to his body, damp with moisture. His face was pallid and his hair was plastered across his forehead, pinned to the nape of his neck. He looked ill.

Aelin willed him to look at her.

He did.

“Start over, Rowan,” Maeve said.

His eyes didn’t have time to leave hers before the oath viciously snapped his body into motion and his arm wound back releasing the crack and the pain and Aelin arched against the sensation, head snapping to face front again. Her jerking motion was enough that the two males bracing her on either side tightened their grips on her arms. She considered how much it would bruise, their hands, and immediately chastised herself at how stupid a thought that was to be having as her back bled beads of crimson. But it was easier to think about the brutish men and their heavy hands than her beautiful male shaking and heaving behind her; she’d grant herself that permission, that weakness.

A waiting silence fell between them, but Aelin couldn’t bring herself to count the marks.

She focused instead on sounds, tried to pick them out as best she could from the ringing in her ears. She heard wind and waves but they felt distant, not of this world; there was the rustling of fabric as bodies shifted and was that a clanking of metal, of chains? Aelin heard her own heartbeat pounding loudly, perhaps the clearest sound of all. It was so loud she thought for certain everyone surrounding her could feel it in their own chests. It overpowered everything, and Aelin blinked to try and clear her mind. To ground herself. She was stronger than this. She could pace herself from the pain but it cut deeper than the physical and she thought her heart would break and she tried, she tried,  _she tried to focus_. Still, she could hardly hear Elide’s sobs from somewhere in the distance, a mumbled cry of “ _oh gods_ ” over, and over, and over again and she couldn’t hear Maeve’s command to start over and she couldn’t pick up Rowan’s strangled choke because all she could hear was the rampant  _thump - thump - thump_ of her heart, over and over and over and —

A crack. A scream — no, two. Overlapping cries of pain, tugging her quickly back into the reality set before her. Aelin’s knees buckled beneath her and she hung limp from the hands of the males holding her. She couldn’t tell where her cries ended and Rowan’s began as he wailed with a ferocity that served to remind how feral creatures the Fae could be. Her throat was hoarse and she tasted the metallic iron of her blood in her mouth from where she clamped down on her cheek in a brief and futile effort to remain silent.

She heard the dull thump of the whip hitting earth followed then by a louder sound that could only be Rowan falling to his knees.

“I knew you were holding back, Rowan. Much better.”

Aelin didn’t need to view her face to imagine the sickly sweet smile on the woman’s face, but when Maeve stepped in front of her, her suspicions were confirmed. Her vision was blurry, but she lifted her chin defiantly and raised her eyes.

“And you, niece,” Maeve began in a sugary coo. “Are you still so sure you don’t want to tell me what number that was?”

Aelin spat at her feet in response.

“Not very polite, are you? Good thing we’ll have plenty of time, you and I, to learn manners befitting a princess.”

“Queen.”

His voice was rasped, broken. Aelin could hear the struggle in the short syllable. She couldn’t be sure how the mating bond and blood oath warred within Rowan’s body and soul, but the effect they had was wrecking him. That much was certain.

“What was that, Rowan?” Maeve sneered.

“A —  _queen_ ,” he panted, slightly stronger this time. Aelin twisted her head as much as she could and managed to just barely take in his figure as he knelt. It was a decided action, no longer slumped forward in anguish. No, he knelt before her now in an act of defiance against Maeve. It worried Aelin that she allowed it of her commanded, wondering what retaliation would be served.

x

“My Queen,” Rowan said, stronger still.

His eyes were on Aelin, only Aelin, her form regaining some tiny semblance of strength in lieu of the whipping. His own chest began to ease moderately, though it worried him to feel a slackening of Maeve’s otherwise tight leash on his will. His breath began to steady again and he took the opportunity to rise, slowly. He found himself briefly thankful for his controller’s tendency to play with her food, to toy with and enjoy the things before breaking them for no reason other than she could. It was a thin line, he knew, but if it could just grant him time to think …

“Isn’t that just precious,” Maeve tittered. “Have you forgotten your loyalties so easily, my dear?” Rowan said nothing. “Come closer and speak, Rowan.”

“No,” he shuddered once his legs brought him forward. He stood in Aelin’s line of sight. It was the truth regarding his loyalties, of course. Maeve certainly had demonstrated where his loyalties were locked. Throughout it all, he was unable to forget them.

“Consider this my wedding gift to you,” she said after a pause, once more adopting that sickly sweet tone, “and don’t move.”

He didn’t, though his brows furrowed in slight confusion and he saw Aelin shift from the holds of the two large Fae males keeping her in place.

“Lorcan,” Maeve beckoned, the male moving forward from his space nearby. “Continue where we left off.”

And the male did. Again, and again, and again. Still, Aelin refused to count. Rowan found himself faced with a new kind of torture, the nightmares rolling into real life each as bad or worse than the one before. Where the blood oath previously kept him causing hurt to his mate, it now held him rooted to the spot and utterly helpless. He didn’t need to watch her to feel the pain, its transference shooting down the bond they shared. Beads of sweat rolled down his face and back in a mocking mimicry of Aelin’s blood drip-dripping into the earth.

_Please_ , he begged silently willing his wife to hear. But what he begged for he couldn’t be sure. For her to do as Maeve wished? For her to forgive him of both his action and inaction? For it all to end, then and there, the torture too much to handle?  _Pleasepleaseplease —_

“Majesty, it might be prudent to postpone until later.” The words came from the smaller of the males holding Aelin, and Maeve’s attention turned from a panting Rowan (oh, how she enjoyed watching his pain) to the source of the voice. “Others are approaching,” he explained.

Maeve considered, and Rowan felt his heart speeding up. If he could just buy them time —

“Very well. Get her ready.”

Aelin’s eyes, bloodshot and silvered with tears and pain, reached Rowan’s in a panic. Neither had time to feel thankful as Lorcan dropped the whip, because soon it became clear what new torture was being set forward.

“ _I love you_ ,” she breathed.

An iron box and chains.

“ _To whatever end_ ,” she finished.

A mask.

Rowan struggled against the blood oath but it was fruitless. Maeve’s hold was too much, ran too deep — even as her attention was divided. Because soon the elaborate iron mask was in his commander’s hands and she was strapping it to Aelin’s face and whispering something not even his Fae hearing could pick up.

Maeve allowed the finishing touches to be accomplished by the other males, giving her the chance to return to Rowan’s side. She didn’t release him, kept him glued to the spot and silent. The iron chains clamping around his mate’s wrists and ankles clanged through his own body and for the second time that hour he felt the strong urge to empty his stomach. Bile itched up his throat and he swallowed it down. Silver lined his eyes, vision blurred from tears and pain alike.

“You could have had so much honor, Rowan.”

Her words were said aloud but he felt them in his body, too, as she seemed to amplify her thoughts and whims through their blood oath. It created a sickly sensation throughout his entire body, down to the very fibers of his nerves which prickled, torn, dizzying, between blood and soul. He was shaking in place, his heart throbbing wildly in his chest as he stood powerless, spent of any ability or free will and able only to watch his wife and his  _carranam_ , his mate and his queen be locked, now, into an iron box. His throat was on fire.

“Take her away,” she ordered briefly, a lilt to her tongue, the command said as casually as the weather. The males snapped into action. “Speak, Rowan,” she said, now, to him, twisting to look at him. Her face was alight with pleasure and amusement.

“ _Please_ ,” he rasped, and then his body fell forward with the release of her command to keep him still. He vomited into the sand, limbs shaking as he tried to move forward, to run forward, but his body was stuck in a fit of betrayal. “ _Please_ ,” he choked again.

“The thing is, you  _could_  have had so much honor. Oh, but you severed that ages ago with a fickle sense of loyalty. This was nothing more than a little bit of discipline, Prince,” she said with a cool calm that one might use to a child crying over a lost toy. His knees threatened to buckle but his body resisted, pulled up and taut by Maeve’s control. His brain reached in earnest for the thread that tied him to Aelin, trying anything.  _Anything_. But their tether was fragile, as if the iron dulled her to him. His stomach retched in a dry heave again 

Rowan Whitethorn Galathynius watched, helpless, as Maeve retreated with a smile that made him want to rip her face off bit by bit, starting with those cruel and sadistic lips. Her back never turned on him as she approached her henchmen and Lorcan. Her pace never sped up, unlike his heart which threatened to stop from sheer force.

And while she was well outside his reach by the time her words floated to him, they were loud in clear through his mind.

“I strip you of the blood oath, released with dishonor, shame, and  _pity_ ,” but there was amusement in her voice and one last echo in his ear before he fell to his knees of his own free will: “Let the games begin.”

And Rowan released a scream that might have shattered kingdoms before his world went dark.


End file.
